<Begin Segment 17>

KB: Did your parents experience any prejudice that you know of when they came back?

SO: Well, I suppose so, job-wise. I don't really recall, because they were not professionals, so they had a hard time.

KB: How about your sister? Was she working at that time? Did she finish high school at Minidoka?

SO: Yeah, she's (four) years older, so I think she finished there. And she went to work for either the library or Macy's now, it was Meier & Frank as a seamstress.

KB: So she worked at Meier & Frank as a seamstress?

SO: I think so, yeah.

KB: Did she ever say anything about feeling any prejudice at all?

SO: No, she had her friends.

KB: Went to work, had her friends and then came home? Did you and your family participate in any of the Japanese American organizations or community churches, anything like that?

SO: Yeah, my mother went to, she was a churchgoing, she went to a Buddhist church.

KB: Where was the Buddhist church?

SO: The one she went to was in Milwaukee.

KB: Do you remember how she got there?

SO: She had friends that picked her up.

KB: Was she the only one in the family that went?

SO: Yeah.

KB: Did you join any organizations at all after you came home, or were you still young...

SO: I went to the Oregon Buddhist Church when I was a teenager.

KB: And did you have friends there and participate in...

SO: Yeah, I had good friends.

KB: Did you participate in the activities that they did and things like that?

SO: Yeah, and we played basketball for the Buddhist church.

KB: Were your neighbors at all prejudiced, did you feel that at all?

SO: No, not right away. Well, the Park Apartments was owned by Japanese, or leased by Japanese.

KB: And were there lots of Japanese Americans living there?

SO: A few families, yeah.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.